STRUCTURE DU FACTEUR TERRE

To understand how organisations use discourses of the body to maintain field legitimacy at the Fertility Show, this thesis particularly focuses on the female body within fertility treatment because of its fundamental role within reproduction.

Its biological function is, however, not devoid of gendered social expectations which have over time been challenged. Critical perspectives on women’s reproductive lives have traditionally come from feminist scholarship and thought. Within organisation studies, scholars have looked at the female body in relation to reproduction first and foremost as a fertile body that is either pregnant or that has already achieved the status of motherhood. Overall, within organisation studies there is a lack of attention to female non-reproductive bodies. This section introduces feminist critical perspectives on the female reproductive body, before presenting the main works of organisation scholars in relation to the body in general (2.4) and the female body in relation to reproduction in particular (2.5). This section thus highlights existing feminist literature on women’s bodies and reproduction, which positions the female body at the centre of social norms and expectations particularly with regards to motherhood.

Currently, the female reproductive body is intensely at the centre of regulation and public attention. The Guttmacher Institute noted that by the end of the first quarter of 2015, only in the US 791 laws on reproductive health and rights were introduced by legislators, the vast majority of which were dedicated to abortion, with 42% of the latter attempting to restrict access to abortion altogether (Guttmacher Institute, 2015). Women’s bodies still appear to be under wide and deep scrutiny and regulation by medicine and politics.

Feminists have brought to light issues of reproduction, abortion and contraception for several decades (Firestone, 1970; Rose, 1987; Moore, 2010; Shaw, 2012). We can distinguish two main positions in the literature: one that sees control over reproduction as liberation, and one that sees it as patriarchal oppression of women through medical power. One of the most significant perspectives on reproductive choice is represented by the work of Firestone (1970: 11) who argued for the elimination of sex distinction so that “genital differences between human beings would no longer matter culturally”. By identifying the biological family as the cause of the first division of labour, Firestone suggested that the dependency of women on men was due to reproductive differences (1970: 8). She argued that in order to break free from this dependency, a wider use of birth control practices and reproductive technologies would be necessary. However, Haraway notes that despite Firestone’s central role in feminist radical debates around reproduction and oppression, her focus was mainly on the power of technology over the body, which implied seeing women’s bodies as essentially flawed and passive in relation to biology (Haraway, 1991: 10). If we are but victims of our reproductive functions, Haraway argues, then we are preparing the ground for a domination of technology over us (Haraway,

1991). If, following Firestone, we need contraception and reproductive technologies to liberate ourselves, then by leaving technology in charge of our liberation we are ultimately giving up our power, and are therefore either dominated by our biological functions or by the technologies used to dominate our biological functions (Haraway, 1991).

The relation between reproduction and technology is hence at the core of important discussions on the female body. It has been argued that a central issue for feminist scholars must be the increasing power the medical profession assumes in determining who can become a mother, who cannot and on what grounds (Rose, 1987). This is where control over reproduction stops being understood as liberation and starts being conceptualised as potentially oppressive. Medical knowledge becomes the medium and reason behind the use of technology, however invasive and life-changing it will be. When it comes to reproduction, reproductive medicine does offer a technological solution to women’s infertility; however, this is achieved by strengthening the “ideology of motherhood” (Rose, 1987: 171; see also Malacrida and Boulton, 2012) and the idea that the status of ‘mother’ needs to be achieved, regardless of the cost.

The way women’s bodies are described in this discourse also contributes to negative images around their bodies, and adds to the already problematic discourses on women’s reproductive objectification. When the woman is understood as an object and vessel for future life, often the foetus is subjectified and prioritised (Squier, 1996). For example, Martin (1990) describes images of failure related to menstruation as a

‘missed pregnancy’—in terms such as failure of the egg to implant, hormonal deprivation to the endometrial lining,

disintegration of the endometrium, all of which reflect powerfully the way we conceive women’s bodies not just in relation to menstruation but to women’s reproductive health as a whole. On the other side of reproduction, Martin found that in medical school physiology texts, words used to describe sperm and sperm creation were all positive (Martin, 1990: 76).

We can therefore understand how women’s bodies have often been viewed as essentially controversial, also because throughout their reproductive life they present themselves as non-binary, unruly, and open. This is mostly in contrast to men’s bodies, which despite leaking as much as any other body, tend to be portrayed as “self-contained, autonomous and hard”

(Longhurst, 2001: 85). Longhurst notes that this is particularly evident in the case of pregnant bodies, which

“can be seen to occupy a borderline state as they disturb identity, system and order by not respecting borders, positions and rules. …they constantly

‘threaten’ to split their one self into two or more. … Pregnant women’s bodily fluids pose a threat to social control and order. Pregnant women’s border ambiguity can become, for others, a threat to their own borders.”

(Longhurst, 2001: 84)

Pregnancy is not the only event in a woman’s life and body that is widely socially constructed as borderline and as of threat to the social order. Hormonal processes, too, seem to foster disease categories and suggest the need to contain features that are, by ‘nature’, not meant to be contained. This is important also with regards to power concerns: for instance, portraying Pre-Menstrual Syndrome (PMS) as a disease category that is gendered has been argued to “reinforce and reproduce power relationships of gender” where “the female

body is positioned at the site of dysfuction” (Swann, 1997:

180). Discourses on the female dysfunctional body based on the cultural construction of female hormones have in the last decades occupied a significant position in the way gender and behaviour have been understood and studied (Swann, 1997).

Besides PMS, this can be noted with regards to the menopausal body, seen as a diseased body that, because of its oestrogen-deficiency, should be treated by hormone replacement therapy (HRT) (Hunter and O’Dea, 1997). From their study on women’s experiences of menopause, Hunter and O’Dea reflect that

“During the reproductive years, the causes of women’s distress have been located in their reproductive bodies. After the menopause we might expect to become free from such biological attributions in view of the change in reproductive status. It is ironic that at the menopause ‘lack of hormones’ becomes the problem and another explanation for female problems.” (Hunter and O’Dea, 1997: 217)

Such questionable location of women’s ‘distress’ is partly due to the increasing moral role taken by modern medicine, which has a considerably deeper impact on women than men particularly with regards to reproductive and sexual health (Turner, 2008: 187). Viewing the body as “a hierarchically organized bureaucratic system of control” (Martin, 1990: 74) has further important implications as to how the body is conceived in terms of functional/dysfunctional; ultimately, the message delivered is that, for instance, “women are, in some sinister sense, out of control when they menstruate instead of getting pregnant” (Martin, 1990: 75). Women’s bodies, then, are infused with negative conceptions around menstruation

(failure to achieve pregnancy), menopause (ovaries become

‘unresponsive’), and the lack of reproduction more broadly.

The issue becomes more intricate when considering infertility and its conceptualisation as an illness. In most cases, infertility cannot be defined as a life threatening disease, and there is no specific scientific meter to calculate exactly when someone should stop trying to conceive without treatment and becomes medically infertile (Pfeffer, 1987). However, infertility allows for medicine to exercise its moral role by giving “people a ‘normal marriage and family life… Marriage can be ‘saved’ by the presence of children” (Zipper and Sevenhuijsen, 1987:

131).

Health and organisations appear clearly intertwined in fertility treatment. The normalisation process that has led to the increase in treatments (Moore, 1999) makes room for further reflections on issues around women’s bodies and conceptions of womanhood. The exclusion of the body (and in particular, women’s bodies) from social and political discussions has been seen as linked to the historical exclusion of women as a subject in political theory and philosophy. Because of this exclusion, women’s bodies in particular are still regulated, treated and medicated passively (Rawlinson, 2001). This absence of “active” women’s bodies is not as theoretical as it may seem. Bacchi and Beasley (2002: 335) argue that women discussing reproductive autonomy are often (mis)understood as

“a maternal space to be filled”. This is problematic for two reasons: women are seen as passive agents when it comes to their own reproductive choices; and the insistence on procreation in light of infertility might justify “forms of intervention and control that generally would be frowned upon”

(Bacchi and Beasley, 2002: 335), such as physically and emotionally invasive practices and tests.

Feminist scholars have been involved with issues around reproduction and the female body mostly in critical terms, and have highlighted the heaviness and dangers of some of the most widespread social expectations in relation to women’s bodies: 1) that women are defined in relation to their reproductive potential, and hence understood as either mothers or mothers-to-be; 2) that reproduction needs to happen for the woman to be functional and normal; and 3) and that within reproductive choice and medicine, women are still mostly treated passively.

The next section introduces how scholars within organisation studies have been involved with such concerns.

This thesis further develops how women’s bodies are understood when reproduction does not take place. It examines how constructions of the female body are used by organisations to legitimise their interventions in such a body, as well as the existence of an entire organisation field aimed at making the female body reproductive. The next section provides a review of the current organisation studies’ literature on the body, its